Sandbox Fun!

We bought the girls this sandbox on Tuesday after Emily and her cousin Kevin played in his sandbox for about 4 hours on Monday! I realized that it was time for us to have one at our house, and boy do the girls love it!!! They have spent many hours in it building castles and knocking them down!! I also picked up a toy that you put the sand in the top and then it spins little wheels as the sand goes through it, great fun! Kaitlynn really enjoys the sandbox too! At first when I sat her in it she proceeded to put handful after handful of sand into her mouth. Now she just picks the sand up and drops it, skipping her mouth!!

The sandbox also has a picnic table and bench on one side of it. This was an added bonus and has already been used as a play station! We put it underneath the girls "Giant Fort" as Emily calls it, so that it would always be in the shade. We look forward to many days of great summer fun playing on the fort and in the sandbox!

Reaster Reggs, Reaster Reggs, & more Reaster Reggs!

I titled this entry "Reaster Reggs" because that is what Emily called Easter Eggs this year. It sounds so cute in person!

Emily was so much fun this Easter!!! She really got into all the egg hunting, egg filling and egg decorating! And really got into the Easter Bunny! She had 5 Easter egg hunts this year, but the weather was so bad that only one of those hunts was outside! She started hunting at Mommie's house the Sunday before Easter. Jay Mac, David, and Renee' were able to come out this Sunday for an early Easter gathering (they all had to work on Easter). When Emily would find an egg she would shake it, if it sounded like something was in there she would put it into her basket, if it did not sound like there was anything in there she would

throw it over her shoulder. We also had an Easter egg hunt at church and Emily and I filled 250 plastic eggs with chocolate candy! She would place one piece of chocolate into each half of the egg and then try to shut it. Sometimes I would have to help her shut the egg.

The hunt at the church was moved to inside the church building because of the cold and windy weather. All the kids hunted in the auditorium which was fun. I even notice that one egg was baptized during the hunt! (ha, ha) Kaitlynn enjoyed this hunt as well. I sat her down by a group of eggs under one pew. She managed to get an egg open and find the chocolate candy inside of it and bite through the foil wrapper with her two little teeth and get some chocolate in her mouth! She also loved pulling the grass out of the easter baskets.

Emily absolutely loved coloring the boiled Easter eggs. It was so much fun to watch her as she dropped a color tablet into each of the six cups of water! She would name each color as it began to fill the water. Then she would plop an egg into each cup, breaking a few of the eggs. Mommie got her this neat spinning egg coloring kit. Emily really loved that too. All in all she colored 3 dozen eggs. Guess what we will be eating the next 2 weeks!

Sunday morning when Emily woke up the Easter Bunny had come to our house. Emily was so excited! The Easter Bunny brought her a set of golf clubs, lip gloss, pez dispensor, a stuffed bunny, and lots and lots of candy! She did not want to go to church that morning, because she was having so much fun playing with her new stuff!! Kaitlynn also


enjoyed what the Easter Bunny brought her. She love digging through her basket looking at all the different sizes of eggs. The Easter Bunny also hid small eggs all over our living room with money in them. Emily loved collecting all of those.

We did manage to get to see the Easter Bunny last Friday. Of course Emily called him the Reaster Bunny. Later that evening she said the Reaster Bunny Hold Me, He BIG. She is used to all the little cotton tails that run around our house and farm, she did not know that bunnies could get that big!


Our final hunt was in Levelland at my cousin Angela's house. This was the only hunt that we were able to do outside and we had to wait for it to stop raining to do it. It was great though. Kyle, Elizabeth, Kevin and Emily all loved the hunt and each found a great number of eggs.






All in all Easter was a great success. Now I just have to start rationing out the candy. Holiday's are so much fun with little kids around for everyone to watch!

Filling Easter Eggs for the church Hunt!

The Reaster Bunny!!!

Oh, I think you missed some Emily!

Kaitlynn found a couple of chocolate filled eggs!

"What did you get in your basket Emily?"

Both girls checking out each others baskets

Look how many I found!

Coloring Eggs the new way!

Maybe my elbow will work better to make the egg spin!

Emily was so pround of this purple egg!

Look at what the Easter Bunny brought the girls!

Is there any candy in this one?

Hunting on the go, Emily did not even have to look to see where to put the egg she picked up. Her eyes were on the next find!

Wow, look at that big egg on that tree!

Emily and Kevin at the end of the hunt! Kevin was so nice to Emily and would pick up the eggs for her and put them in her basket! Well, except for this pink (his favorite color!) egg.




What great fun was had by hunting Reaster Reggs !

Happy Easter!

Kansas & The Zoo

Over Spring Break we all took a trip up to Kansas for the week to see Granny (Shelby's Mom). We spent most of our time rebuilding the corners of a pasture fence. Everyone pitched in and helped, Granny, Charlie, Emily, Kaitlynn and myself. Of course Shelby did almost all of the heavy, heavy work. I was able to help when the girls were both asleep. Emily helped some, and loved playing in the soft dirt from the holes we had dug.

One day we took a break from building fence and went to the Sedwick County Zoo in Wichita. WOW what a great zoo!!! Emily absolutely loved seeing all the different animals. Some of her favorites were the turtles (pictures below), the gorilla's, giraffe's and the hippopotamus' (you sould here her pronounce that one, HA, HA!)

We spent about 5 hours looking at all the differnt animals. Thankfully we had the handy, dandy double stroller! Emily loved the part of the zoo where she was able to feed some of the animals. She was not one bit afraid of goats and sheep and she went into fed them. She was able to get about 2 feet from the giraffe's and loved it!
Granny bought us lunch at the zoo, and Emily got a kids meal, which came with a plastic monkey head lunch box. She loved it, and always wants to take her snack in it where ever we go! Thanks Granny for the great keepsake! We will always think of our wonderful day at the zoo when we use it!! It was an exhausting day, but well worth it. We all loved seeing all the animals and seeing Emily's expressions everytime we saw a new animal was priceless! We highly recommend going to this zoo if you are ever in the Sedwick County area. A few more animals at this zoo include 3 toed sloths, sting rays, penguins, rinos, lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), a bald eagle. bats (little and big), parrots, wolfs, one animal that looke half zebra and half giraffe, kangaroos and many, many more. If you are really interested you can visit their website.

These turtles were bigger than Emily and would stand up and let the zoo keeper clean under their shells (you can see it in the background a little bit)!

Emily watched this turtle for about 20 minutes

She did not even have to get out of her stroller to feed this rare sheep.

Kaitlynn enjoying chewing on her shoulder strap.

Pagosa Springs

Mama took Jay Mac, Emily, Kaitlynn and I up to Pagosa Springs, Colorado and what an awesome time we all had!! Shelby, David and Renee' were invited but all had to work :(

We stayed in a wonderful condo that had a living area, dinning area, kitchen (fully furnished), 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a loft. Emily loved the upstairs and would climb up them and then slide down backwards on her stomach, especially in her P.J's (or Ba-yah's as Emily calls them). We had a great time watching movies one day, while Jay Mac and Mama went to a meeting so Jay Mac could get a free lift ticket. He went snowboarding with his friend Melissa who lives in Colorado Springs. It took a while for Emily to warm up to her, but she finally did on the last day. We went shopping and found the girls the cuttiest little shirts. We had ice-cream everyday, since we found a place that only charged $1.19 for a small (but I don't know why they called it a small it was HUGE!) The last day we ate ice-cream I was enjoying mine when all of a sudden the whole thing fell off the cone right onto Kaitlynn's shirt and my shoulder. I managed to save most of it and went to get a cup the eat the salvaged part out of. We went swimming everyday, except for the day we went to the Hot Springs, but more on that later. This was the first time Kaitlynn had gone swimming. She loved it! She would fall asleep everytime we were in the water for a while. Emily really enjoyed swimming also. She learned to jump off the side of the pool into my arms. She also floated by herself a couple of times! We all liked playing the game of motor boat. This is a game from my childhood that you play in the water. You hold the child and spin slowly and say "Motor boat, motor boat go so slow", then you spin a little faster and say "Motor boat, motor boat go so fast", and finally you spin really really fast and say "Motor boat, motor boat step on the gas". Emily would just laugh out loud really hard. One night instead of swimming we went to the Hot Springs. Thanks to Jay Mac for paying our way in!! They were wonderful and of course Kaitlynn fell asleep in the really warm water. We sat in one that was 105 degrees! They were very relaxing, but did not smell very well (like sulfur, yuck!). One afternoon Mama, Emily, Kaitlynn and I decided to go up Wolf Creek pass and then decided to go onto the slopes to see if we could find Jay Mac. Could not believe the amount of snow on top of the mountian. We found out that Emily will be able to take ski lessons next year! Mama already bought her pink ski pants, as you can see in the pictures below and we found a great pink coat for $4 up at a shop in Pagosa. We had such a wonderful time and look forward to going back again next and hopefully Shelby, David and Renee' will be able to come with us! Thank you Mommie for helping us make such great memories, we will treasure them for a lifetime!!!! Kaitlynn enjoying playtime on the floor in the condo.

Emily and Mommie up on Wolf Creek!

Emily making a snow angel up on Wolf Creek ski slopes!

Ready to go everyone?










Sleeping Beauty!

What fun!

Kaitlynn's first time to swim! She loved it!!

Jay Mac and Emily. She loved to ride the lobster.

Mommie and Kaitlynn ready to swim.

Don't you just love our big cowboy hats! Found then at Clines Corners. We would always stop at this store when we went to Pagosa with Mama Mary every summer, so we had to continue the tradition with Emily and Kaitlynn!